Auditors: Waste Crippling Indian Housing Programs

July 8, 1985|By United Press International

WASHINGTON — Government auditors have found $65.5 million in waste caused by mismanagement of housing construction programs for American Indians at a time when reservations face a critical housing shortage.

Auditors for the Department of Housing and Urban Development cited mismanagement in the agency's Indian programs division in Denver for cost overruns, non-existent projects and 911 homes that never were com- pleted.

Grady Maples, HUD's regional director in Denver, said his office responded to the inspector general's March audit with a ''new management team to correct the problems and get the pipeline moving again.''

The Denver office oversees Indian housing programs in Utah, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska.

HUD has no plans to audit housing programs in other regions, said an official in Washington.

With 33,000 homeless American Indians nationwide, the situation soon will be disastrous, said Jim Wagenlander, a specialist in Indian law.

''We'll be back to the '60s, with people living in cars and chicken coops,'' he said.

''There are some gaps,'' said John Meyers, director of HUD's Indian housing program in Washington. ''I don't think anyone would try to sell you the notion that we're meeting the need.''

Census Bureau statistics show that 47 percent of the 11,888 residents of the Oglala Sioux reservation in South Dakota live below the poverty level.

The Housing Assistance Council, a non-profit housing group in Washington, estimates 60 percent of the Oglala residents live in houses that have no indoor toilet facilities, poor insulation, and are overcrowded.

''A lot of them families are doubled up,'' said John Richards, an official at the Oglala Sioux Housing Authority. ''We've got about 1,300 units but there's a real need for about 2,600.''